Graphics card problem! HELP?

[Bart Silverstrim]

Michael Emberlin wrote:
> Andrew Syrewicze wrote:
>> Bart Silverstrim wrote:
>>   
>>> Andrew Syrewicze wrote:
>>>
>>>   
>>>     
>>>> Just a quick question. Did you install the nvidia driver from the 
>>>> repositories or the driver from Nvidia.com???
>>>>     
>>>>       
>>> I tried the nvidia-glx and nvidia-glx-new from the repos, and tried 
>>> Automatix2 (couldn't detect the card to identify), and I tried an 
>>> application caled Envy (which apparently is what NVIDIA translates to?), 
>>> but Envy couldn't ID the card, and then I tried Envy in manual mode and 
>>> that didn't work either.
>>>
>>> Results varied from the white screen (which stuck if I didn't hit escape 
>>> quickly enough) to X failing to start to complete black screen lockup. 
>>> Each time I had to either boot to safe mode from GRUB or log in as an 
>>> admin user and re-copy a backup of xorg.conf to the /etc/X11 directory 
>>> and restart, after which it would work again sans extra feature.
>>>
>>>   
>>>     
>>>> I have found that the driver from the repositories works quite 
>>>> painlessly, though I don't know for a card that new. I'm running a 7900 
>>>> GT Extreme and it works like a champ for me :)
>>>>     
>>>>       
>>> How new is the 8600?  That is most likely part of my problem.  Any idea 
>>> if there is work being done to support it in the open-source world?
>>>
>>>   
>>>     
>> Your best bet may be to go to nvidia.com and download the driver from 
>> there. I know that method is frowned upon in the debian world, but with 
>> a card that new it may be your best bet.
>>
>> Anyone else on the list running that vid card???
>>
>>   
> You're best bet to see if your card is supported, is to browse through 
> the list of video cards in the README file at
> 
> http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-9755/README/index.html

I didn't see it there, per se, but it might be out of date...the beta 
driver on their site is 
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_100.14.03.html

It says that the driver was just released on April 20th?  It looks like 
it explicitly supports the 8600gt.

I will have to see that I try installing build-essential from Synaptic 
and then figure out how to run Ubuntu without an X server running in the 
proper init level before trying to install the driver, from the sounds 
of it.  Can I just use a virtual terminal (ctl-alt-f2) and sudo gdm stop 
to quit out of X in the background?

I guess I just didn't know how new this card is.  I'm really really 
hoping that down the road I can upgrade and this card will actually be 
fully supported...I just have no idea what the progress is that teams at 
NVIDIA and/or Beryl/compiz and/or the OSS developers behind the 
open-source NVIDIA drivers are making, and I have no idea who to email 
or where to look to see if this is even being worked on.